


Blue in Green

by FleetingMadness



Category: Cowboy Bebop (Anime)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Backstory, Pre-Canon, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:42:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21843121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleetingMadness/pseuds/FleetingMadness
Summary: Closing time at a diner in Titania. It's a wonder the only employee still working didn't hear the fight while it was happening.A humble speculation on how Jet and Spike's first meeting might have gone.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 38
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Blue in Green

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kyburg](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyburg/gifts).



The first guy Jet saw was slumped against the wall, directly across from the door. He was ready to dismiss him as another poor drunk until he turned and saw the second guy, sprawled on top of the dumpster. The third and fourth were laid on their backs a little further down, their jackets open and their pockets turned out. A switchblade lay discarded between them; Jet nearly stepped on a second knife. Only a thin wisp of smoke let him know that the fifth pair of legs he saw reaching from behind the dumpster belonged to someone alive. Jet took a step toward him, then stopped. This sort of thing wasn’t his business anymore.

Instead, Jet brushed the unconscious man off one dumpster lid. As he dropped the first bag in, he saw the smoke trail shift.

“They’re not dead.” The voice came from below the smoke trail. Jet leaned around the rusted metal corner, and found himself staring down at a tangle of dark hair, with one brown eye and a cigarette barely visible from underneath.

“Didn’t think they were,” Jet lied.

A moment passed in silence. The eye stared blankly forward. Jet threw the second bag in the dumpster, and shut the lid more gently than usual. He paused for a moment; a thousand questions he no longer needed to ask passed through his head, and he shoved down every one of them. By the time that was done, the silence had lasted too long, and Jet gave up on saying anything at all.

Two steps towards the door, the silence was broken by the low squeal of an empty stomach. Jet sighed. Just because he wasn’t professionally obligated to help people anymore, didn’t mean he couldn’t choose to. He walked back to the corner of the dumpster and clapped it with his good hand.

“Come inside,” Jet said. “I’ll fix you something with the day’s leftovers.” The eye finally focused on him through the hair.

“I didn’t ask.”

“I know.” Jet stood up and crossed his arms. The left one still felt unnaturally cold against his right. “I’m doing this so I don’t get sick thinking about you taking the food from the trash later.”

A moment passed.

“Fair enough,” the man grunted as he picked himself up.

* * *

Spike looked around the diner. Lit only through the order window, it seemed desolate, but familiar. Like any number of restaurants he had come to before, after the signs were off but before the doors were locked. Sometimes demanding money, sometimes asking questions. Sometimes alone, sometimes with… sometimes not alone. His eyes traced over the scuffed chairs resting under identical tables, and settled on the spot closest to the jukebox.

He drew out a new cigarette (the burly guy hadn’t let him bring his lit one through the kitchen) and his lighter. As it caught, he started to flip through the records on the jukebox. It was a real antique, still using CDs instead of digital song storage. Just as well, since most music from the 2050s on still reminded him pretty viscerally of the Syndicate. Sometimes it was meeting rooms and pressed suits, which was fine, but more often it was blood and gunsmoke and bruises. At its worst, it was Her. Some older music carried that threat, too, but those songs were easy to avoid. Not many people played Diana Krall on store radios anymore.

What am I doing here? In a way, the answer was obvious; he was getting his first solid meal in two days. Even after two years, it was proving pretty hard to keep afloat after a fake death, and what money he did make from odd jobs and would-be muggers got spent almost immediately. Even so, he’d managed this long without begging or taking charity. Childish though it seemed, he couldn’t quite bring himself to rely on anyone else just yet.

So why was he here? What was it about this man and his tragic hairline that made him different?

Spike turned over the question and a coin for a few minutes, all the while peering at the album list on the jukebox. He lost track of how long it took, but he finally settled for one answer out of two and slid the coin into the machine. As a slow, lamenting piano melody filled the room, the burly guy appeared in the kitchen door, a paper plate held high in one hand.

“Soup’s up,” the guy said. He was smiling now, broad and warm and honest: three things Spike wasn’t used to in a smile. “House special. Three kinds of meat with two days ‘till it expires, seasoned to perfection with salt and ketchup. Served on our finest almost-stale bread, warmed over a propane stove so I don’t have to clean the real one again.” He set the plate down on the table, then looked over to the jukebox at the sound of a gently muted trumpet. “Davis, huh? That’s an old record.”

“Guess I’m just an old-fashioned guy,” Spike said. Anything else he might have said was quickly replaced in his mouth with the generously-portioned sandwich. The burly guy said nothing, sitting in silence as the gentle melody floated through the air, both seemingly unaffected by the sounds of Spike’s attempt at eating. The silence lasted until Spike had pushed about half the sandwich into his mouth and begun to chew. 

“Why were—“ He was interrupted by a poorly-timed swallow, but continued undeterred. “You so sure I’d end up dumpster diving? You just—gulp—assume everyone who gets jumped is poor?”

“Of course I don’t,” the burly guy said. “But you took some leftovers earlier, so I figured you couldn’t be in too good a position.” Spike’s stomach turned, in a different way than it had been turning for days. Was the hunger getting to his sleight of hand, or was this guy just that good? Better to play it cool, either way.

“Oh?” He swallowed the last of the food in his mouth and leaned back in his chair. “And when, pray tell, did you see such a thing?” He took a long pull at his cigarette, then offered it to the burly guy, who took it with his right hand and a polite nod.

“Three o’clock every day, Wen Zhang comes in and orders a reuben with double mustard.” The guy grinned as he pulled on the cigarette; it was a smug look; triumphant, but somehow lacking in cruelty. Spike wasn’t used to that, either. “Three twenty-five, the plate comes back with three bites left. Every single day, except today.” Another drag, and he pointed the cigarette back in Spike’s direction. “Three-ten today, your sorry butt comes in, and you spend ten minutes checking your pockets after Chuck tells you the price for coffee. I wasn’t sure until I saw you in the alley, but this shop is mostly regulars, so I had a pretty solid hunch.” Spike scowled and took back his cigarette. “Don’t look so down. I used to be a detective, you know. This sorta stuff comes easy.” 

“A detective, huh?” Spike raised an eyebrow. “So how do you go from being a detective on Ganymede to a line cook on Titania?” Instantly, the man’s face darkened. The metal brace beneath his eye gleamed beneath a suddenly-furrowed brow. The change in his posture was subtle, but his shoulders suddenly looked much wider. Spike felt a chill, but chose to resume eating.

“I never said I was on Ganymede,” he said, slowly. “So tell me, how would some vagrant happen to know a thing like that?”

“Relax, man,” Spike said through a mouthful of sandwich. “I guessed from your accent, that’s all.” The man’s tension shattered all at once; his posture dropped, he braced his forehead in one hand, and he made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sigh that Spike didn’t think was entirely intentional.

“My accent, huh,” the man said. “Sorry about that. I didn’t exactly leave the GPD with a happy retirement party, if you catch my meaning. I did my best to leave it all behind me, but it’s hard to know if it’s done the same for me.”

“I hear you,” Spike nodded. He carefully regarded the final corner of the sandwich so he wouldn’t have to think about Vicious. “Still, detective to this is a pretty long way to fall.” He tossed the bite into his mouth. He knew he’d still be hungry afterward, but maybe making a thing out of it would help his stomach relax for a while.

“Yeah, well, this is just a side gig,” the man said. He rolled his shoulders; real first, then prosthetic. “I’m a bounty hunter by trade, but my ship needs some new parts before she’s going to get me anywhere near a hyperspace gate. I’d hoped to scoop up a few bounties to cover it, but as it turns out, nobody on this rock has a big enough number to be worth the time.” With an exaggerated shrug and a one-sided smile, he continued, “It helps that hunting doesn’t tip.”

“Bounty hunter, huh,” Spike nodded. “Lotta folks with bounties around here?”

“There’s a few,” the man said. “But like I said, no one worth the time.” For the first time in what felt like weeks, Spike felt himself smile and mean it.

“Well then,” he said, “Guess I’d better bring in a bunch of them at once.” Spike took a long drag on his cigarette; when he looked down, the burly man had raised both eyebrows at him and moved very little else. “What? You saw those punks in the alley. I can more than handle a few small fry who got in over their heads.”

“Sure you can,” the man said. Spike was almost hurt by the sarcasm. “Just make sure you pick a different alley to collapse in next time. This was a one-time deal.” 

Of course it was. Spike never got that lucky twice. Instead of saying so, he stood up, shrugged his shoulders, and turned to the door.

“Don’t worry, big guy,” he said. He didn't look back, so he missed the man mouthing “big guy” in shock. “The next time you see me, I’ll be paying for my meal, and a coffee too.”

* * *

“And then?”

“And then what?”

“What happened next?” Faye crossed her arms on the table, her cards seemingly forgotten but carefully pressed against her forearm.

“Nothing.” Spike shrugged. “I left.”

“You just left?” Faye half-stood, leaning forward to further punctuate her sentence. “No thank you, no goodbye? Tell me you at least asked each other’s names!” Spike’s eyes focused on a stain on the card table; Jet looked up at the ceiling.

“You know, now she mentions it, I don’t think I did catch your name that first time,” Jet said. He lifted his arms to let Ein hop onto his lap. “I guess it must’ve been when you came back.”

“I swear,” Faye sighed. “You two are so painfully macho sometimes, it makes me sick.”

“Is that why you’ve been stalling your bet?” Spike asked.

“I’m not stalling,” Faye said, “I’m thinking. You should try it sometime.” She pushed four chips into the center of the table. “I raise.” Spike whistled. Jet stroked his beard thoughtfully, looking from his cards to the pot and back. Faye gave a smug grin, somehow directed at both men at once. “Now look who’s stalling.”

“What do you think, Ein?” Jet lowered his cards for the corgi, who took a look at them, tilted his head, then batted the hand down with his snout. Jet nodded. “Hm. I fold.” Spike laughed, while Faye tried not to look disappointed.

“You’re letting a dog play for you?” Faye said. “I thought you said you were good at this game.”

“He’s smarter than either of you,” Jet said. He pushed himself up. The shaking of the table knocked a chip astray from Faye’s carefully arranged pile. “I’ve gotta go check the navigation anyway. Damn thing’s been funny ever since Spike slammed that guy’s face into the console.”

“Sorry,” Spike said, with a tone that meant he absolutely wasn’t.

“You will be when it gets us stranded in the asteroid belt,” Jet called back. With a gentle shunk from the door, he was gone, leaving a pleased-looking corgi and a meager pile of chips.

“I can’t believe he gave you a sandwich and you didn’t even ask his name.” Faye gave Spike a look that couldn’t quite be bothered to be a glare. “Still, it is a pretty memorable first meeting, I suppose.”

“That was nothing,” Spike grinned. “You should hear about when I came back.” He dropped a handful of Jet’s chips in the center of the table. “I call.”

**Author's Note:**

> I actually didn't know who Diana Krall was before writing this. If you're a fan of chill jazz lounge singer types, definitely check her out. Woman's got chops.


End file.
